16 [a]Wash you, make you clean, take away the evil of your works from before mine eyes: cease to do evil.

17 Learn to [b]do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed: judge the fatherless, and defend the widow.

18 Come now, [c]and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins were as crimson, they shall be made [d]white as snow: though they were red like scarlet, they shall be as wool,

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 1:16 By this outward washing, he meaneth the spiritual: exhorting the Jews to repent and amend their lives.
  2. Isaiah 1:17 This kind of reasoning by the second Table, the Scriptures use in many places against the hypocrites, who pretend most holiness and religion in word, but when the charity and love toward their brethren should appear, they declare that they have neither faith nor religion.
  3. Isaiah 1:18 To know if I do accuse you without cause.
  4. Isaiah 1:18 Lest sinners should pretend any rigor on God’s part, he only willeth them to be pure in heart, and he will forgive all their sins, were they never so many or great.

16 Wash(A) and make yourselves clean.
    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;(B)
    stop doing wrong.(C)
17 Learn to do right;(D) seek justice.(E)
    Defend the oppressed.[a](F)
Take up the cause of the fatherless;(G)
    plead the case of the widow.(H)

18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”(I)
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;(J)
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.(K)

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 1:17 Or justice. / Correct the oppressor